


Bootstraps

by ShinyHappyGoth



Category: ReBoot (TV), Tron (1982)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Temporal Paradox, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-05-06 02:39:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14632353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinyHappyGoth/pseuds/ShinyHappyGoth
Summary: Falling through an unstable space-time rift is not usually a good start to the cycle, but at least you might get to go on a mission with one of your heroes and maybe score some historic autographs.





	Bootstraps

**Author's Note:**

> Ages in ReBoot are in binary, with one age unit (they never made it clear how much time a birthday represents—a week, perhaps?) equating to five years. 10 is 10-14, 11 is 15-19. At the moment, Enzo is around 100 (20).
> 
> A micron is the equivalent of ten meters.

**Bootstrap** , _v. (computing)_ : To load and initialize the operating system on a computer. From the expression "to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps," as it is essentially running a program which enables programs to run. Normally abbreviated as "boot".

**Bootstrap paradox** , _n._ : A temporal paradox in which a sequence of events leads to those same events happening, infinitely looping with no apparent beginning. (Contrast **grandfather paradox**.)

 

* * *

 

Enzo rolled as he hit the ground and ended up in a crouch, singed and sore but BASICally unharmed. He groaned, less with pain than irritation. _That_ certainly hadn’t gone as planned. Balun and Value were never going to let him live it down.

He probably deserved whatever he had coming, too. _Sure, guys, I can contain a tear from on a zipboard! Stupid show-off rookie. Why not play chicken with a transfer van while I’m at it?_

_Dot is never hearing about this if I can help it. Ugh, or Matrix. Not sure which would be worse._

Pushing himself to his feet, he brushed himself off and looked around. Wherever the unstable tear had spat him out, it was _not_ anywhere in the Supercomputer.

He had managed to land in what looked like a small park space in a residential sector. Everything was much lower resolution than he was used to, the edges of polygons clearly visible. The ambient light didn’t come from the sky, but from high-up beams of energy connecting buildings or running off into the distance, and from glowing traceries outlining almost everything.

Despite the fact that he have never been anywhere like this before, it was familiar enough. He’d seen systems like it plenty of times, in comic bytes and movie files. For one random moment, he wondered if he had been deposited in a history museum.

The local sprites contributed to that impression. Although not binomes, they were low-poly and grey, with all their colour concentrated into the lines of circuitry running all over their bodies and clothing. They were staring, of course. Enzo supposed he must look even stranger to them than they did to him, plus there was the part where he had just fallen out of the sky.

He tried to look as unintimidating as possible, which was admittedly difficult for a sprite his size who was both in uniform and visibly armed. “Hi! Um. Take me to your leader?”

Several of the locals whispered among themselves, reached some kind of conclusion, and one of the younger ones ran off. Had that line actually worked?

A nanosecond or two passed in silence. This was getting awkward. And boring.

“So… would you mind telling me where I am?”

Silence. Apparently they would.

“Nice park.”

More silence.

“Read any good files lately?”

One of the sprites snorted at this, but was glared back into silence by another.

Enzo sighed, then brightened slightly and took a camera app out of his belt’s compression algorithm. “Would it be okay if I…?”

_That_ broke the silence. Several of the group shrieked, some ducked, some started back, and an authoritative voice behind Enzo barked, “Drop the weapon!”

“Oh, for the love of…” Enzo turned around and froze in astonishment. _Oh my gosh._

“You see?” the young runner was saying to the newcomer. “It just fell of the sky! Have you ever seen anything like it?’

“No, I haven’t,” said the new sprite grimly. “I said drop it, program!” He was imposing, very nearly as tall as Enzo, and held a glowing object which Enzo recognized as an identity disk.

“I… you… I…” _Oh my gosh_ _oh my gosh_ _oh my gosh._ “Look, it’s just a camera,” he said weakly. “Not a weapon. I wanted to take a screenshot, that’s all.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“Is it one of those worms we heard about?” asked one of the locals.

“Hey! I’m standing right here!” Annoyed but still gobsmacked, Enzo returned the camera to his belt.

Unfortunately, this brought his hand a bit too close to his sword hilt. “Not another move!” yelled the imposing sprite, and flung his identity disk.

Enzo dodged sideways, simultaneously drawing his sabre and deflecting the disk. It flew back to its owner, but Enzo, operating on automatic, raised his gauntlet and fired a bolt which exploded into an energy net, pinning his opponent before he could get off another shot.

Then Enzo’s brain caught up with his body.“I’m sorry!” he blurted, dropping his sword and raising his hands. “Frag frag frag I am _so_ sorry sir I did _not_ want to do that I swear I’m not going to hurt anyone and I’ll try to explain if you’ll give me a chance, okay? I’m sorry!”

The stunned silence was broken by a female voice saying, “Well, _somebody_ had better explain. I swear to LoraB, Tron, I can’t leave you alone for two nanoseconds, can I?”

 

* * *

 

“Well,” said Yori, straightening up from her examinations, “bearing in mind that I’ve never seen any code like this before in my entire runtime, and this is really just an educated guess, I would have to say that…”

“Yes?”

“It’s a camera.”

There was a brief silence.

“Huh.”

“I did say,” mumbled Enzo. “Can I have it back now?”

“You’re sure it’s not a weapon?” Tron asked Yori.

“As sure as I can be. I told you, it’s unlike any language I’ve seen. Whether or not he’s lying about the camera, it looks like he’s telling the truth about being from the future.”

“Hmm.”

“Doesn’t that mean he’s probably telling the truth about the rest?” Mur put in. “If _I_ was from the future, and I was going to lie, that’s the first thing I’d want to cover up. At least I think so.”

Mur was a smallish girl, not yet 11, with short hair and lime-green circuitry. She had arrived on the scene with Yori and was now skating circles around them while Tron questioned Enzo, Yori examined his belongings, and Enzo sat cross-legged and did breathing exercises to keep from freaking out. Her skates propelled her on blades of green light that matched her own.

Tron had dispersed the crowd of onlookers, save for a few roaming bits and bytes, but apparently Yori and he had business with Mur, or she with them, so she waited and skated. As far as Enzo could tell, she wasn’t actually _impatient_ , she just had trouble sitting still.

The rest of them had no such trouble, although Tron was _standing_ still, the better to react if Enzo tried anything. Enzo had relinquished his weaponry and emptied his compression algorithm as a gesture of good faith. (Mur had located his zipboard, which had landed a couple microns away.)

_“Thank_ you,” Enzo told Mur. “I’m already worried about telling you that, but I didn’t really have much choice. I hope you don’t mind if I’m careful with details, though. I’ve seen enough movies about this kind of thing; I’d rather not crash the space-time continuum.”

“We certainly don’t want that,” said Yori, moving on to inspect Enzo’s sword. Enzo wasn’t sure whether or not she was being sarcastic. She seemed sincere, however, when she examined the engravings on the blade and said, “This is nice.”

Yori was a CAD program, almost as historically famous as Tron himself, as much for her artistry as for her technical skill. Despite his situation, Enzo felt gratified.

A bit drifted over—no, a byte, it was larger and more intricate. It wandered between them, then trailed after Mur for a few circuits. “!,” it said. This was less than informative, and after a while it left again.

“But what if you being here _causes_ the future?” Mur suggested. “Then _not_ telling us enough might crash things.”

Enzo considered this. “I feel like if I’m gonna cause my present, it’s gonna happen no matter what. I think I’d better stick to caution, so it’ll work out either way.”

“Awww.”

A few more bytes floated their way. “R,” declared a byte. “Y,” its companions agreed.

Yori, working her way through Enzo’s things, had found a little album of family JPEGs. Besides the sprites themselves, some of the pictures showed the scenery in Mainframe quite clearly. “Oh my. Tron, have a look at…”

“Ow!” cried Mur. One of the gathering bytes—really quite a lot of them now—had assumed its stellated form and dove at her, jabbing her with the nearest point. As the others turned to stare, more of them started to do the same.

Tron immediately drew his disk, but seemed at a loss for how to use it against a swarm of small, erratically-moving enemies surrounding an ally. “Mur, move!”

“Ouch! Right!” She put on speed and broke away from the group, the bytes trailing after her.

“D”

“I”

“E”

Tron cast, and his link to the identity disk gave him enough control to keep it from hitting Mur, but it only knocked two or three bytes out of the air, and more were still arriving. Yori, frantic, started shuffling among Enzo’s belongings.

“The little rod, there!” Enzo told her urgently.

Yori hesitated only a fraction of an instant, then nodded decisively and tossed it to him.

“Yori…” Tron was still unsure.

“Let him!”

Enzo spun the rod’s angle control. “Mur!” he called. “This way, bring them past me! Yori, Tron, stay out of the way!”

Mur swung around and led her glowing, stinging entourage back the way they had come. Enzo let her make three passes around him, gauging the timing, then pointed the rod and let loose a cone of energy.

Mur stumbled slightly and slowed. The bytes, on the other hand, dropped en masse, stunned.

“You’ll probably feel sluggish for a few nanos,” Enzo said, getting to his feet and taking care of a few stragglers. “Sorry, I tried to get you as little as possible, but since they’re so much smaller than you…”

“Yeah, no, that’s… that’s fine,” said a groggy Mur. “Ow. Also, _ow_.”

Tron stepped slowly forward, careful of the bytes that littered the ground like caltrops. He eyed Enzo for a moment, then holstered his disk and extended his hand. “Welcome to ENCOM.”

 

* * *

 

Mur, they explained, had been summoned by the Users to be installed as a new I/O driver. (“Hey, mazel tov!” “Thanks!”) Dumont, an old friend of Tron and Yori’s who was to preside over the installation, had informed them that he was concerned for her safety and asked them to escort her to the I/O tower.

“He didn’t say why, exactly,” said Tron, half-turned to speak to Enzo from the front seat. “Just that he suspected that someone meant her harm, but he didn’t want to accuse anyone outright in case he was wrong. Looks like he wasn’t.”

Yori drove, her hover-sedan skimming smoothly over the ground. It was one of her own designs, which meant sleek, elegant lines as well as excellent performance. Enzo had taken several pictures before getting in, for the express purpose of making Bob sick with envy once he got back.

The best idea they had been able to think of for getting Enzo home was a Return command, and their best bet for obtaining one was Dumont. Since Enzo had proven himself handy in a fight, it was agreed that bringing him along was in all their interests. Enzo had had to fight down a deep-seated urge to tackle Tron in his excitement.

He had, however, requested his signature file, to Yori’s great amusement. (Tron had said maybe later, as they were already driving by that point.)

“Do you know any reason why anyone wouldn’t want you installed?” he asked Mur now.

“Code, no. I/O’s important, but not mysterious-enemy important. Or is it? I’m not, like, famous in the future, am I?” she asked hopefully.

“Er, well, you don’t ring any alerts for me. Sorry. But that doesn’t mean for sure that you’re not. I/O’s not my function, you might be more famous to someone who knew more about it. And I probably wouldn’t even recognize Tron if I saw him as a kid.”

“So I _am_ relevant to your function?” Tron asked.

“You… could say that.” _You could also say you founded the Guardian Collective. There’s a big statue of you and your companions in the middle of the Academy campus. I’ve watched or read about 16 different interpretations of your adventures. Some of them are even historically accurate. Probably not the one with the zombie processes, though._

He wasn’t going to mention the Guardians directly unless Tron did first, though. It might not have happened yet.

Tron seemed to get the gist. “Right, no breaking the continuum, I—”

Abruptly, his face fell and he looked past them at something well beyond the back seat. “Yori…”

Yori looked in the rear-view mirror. Enzo and Mur twisted in their seats to see. It was still distant, but there was definitely a swarm of something following them.

“More bytes?” asked Enzo.

“I don’t think so,” said Mur, who had the youngest and sharpest eyes. “They look more like primitives to me.”

Tron and Yori exchanged a glance, and Yori accelerated.

“What is it?” Mur asked. “Another attack?” She hugged herself anxiously.

“Not on you. These are my problem,” said Tron grimly.

“Primitives?” Enzo was puzzled. “What’s the problem there?”

Tron sighed. “If I’m famous in your time, you’ve heard of the Master Control Program, right? Well, they’re what’s left of him. He started as just a chess program, you know, but he appropriated functions and expanded himself into, well, the MCP. When I de-rezzed him, I took out the core program, and the superstructure he’d built up around himself exploded. I thought that was the end of it, but then these… fragments started chasing me around.”

“What do they want? Revenge?”

“I’m honestly not sure. So far they just swarm around, but they won’t leave me alone. And they’re as hard to hit as those bytes were, and I don’t seem to do any damage even when I connect.”

Enzo looked doubtfully behind at the dwindling swarm. “Primitives shouldn’t be dangerous, should they?”

“Neither should bytes. Anyway, dangerous or not, I don’t want to have to worry about them on top of everything else.”

“What was up with those bytes, anyway?” Mur demanded. “Who attacks someone with bytes?!”

“Who attacks a kid on her way to be installed?” Tron retorted. “Someone majorly glitched, that’s who.”

“Someone not used to attacking anyone, I think,” Enzo mused. “I mean, if I wanted you out of the way—sorry, Mur, just thinking—I’d use an actual weapon, or at least something suited as one. The only thing that made those bytes any kind of a threat was how many there were, right?”

“Right,” said Yori. “So maybe they didn’t have real weapons at their disposal. They’re probably also trying to stay anonymous. Bytes aren’t exactly uncommon. Nothing to trace there.”

Tron grimaced. “So all we know is that someone who isn’t a warrior really doesn’t want to see, no offence, some kid become an I/O driver.”

“None taken, I get what you mean. It makes no sense.”

“You know what else makes no sense?” Yori said, her tone suddenly tense. “This road.”

“Huh? What about it?” Tron looked around; they were now driving through a sort of canyon, with little in the way of notable features.

“There’s been no traffic but us for a while now. Or intersections. Lots of turns, though.”

“So we’re, like… snaking?”

“And going downhill. It’s a slight grade, but steady.”

“It’s like in a Game,” Enzo realized.

“What?”

“I don’t know about in your time, but by mine, a lot of Games only give you one way to go, only the route’s all winding so you don’t think about it as much. It’s just like that. We’re being railroaded.”

Yori spun the wheel hard, making an uncomfortably fast U-turn; Enzo slammed into Mur. “Not anymore, we’re not. I don’t know what’s at the end of this, but I doubt we want to…”

Not far ahead of them, a large chunk vanished from high up on the canyon wall, and appeared in the road ahead of them, blocking their exit.

Yori braked. They all stared.

“They let us see that one,” Tron said a bit too calmly.

“I think they panicked,” Yori replied.

“I think _I’m_ going to,” Mur said through gritted teeth. “What do we do now? I don’t want to keep going that way.”

“I have my zipboard,” Enzo offered, “but it’s only meant for one.”

“That thing with the discs?”

“Yeah. It could fly us out.”

“Can it support us all?” Yori said doubtfully. “I don’t like the idea of splitting up right now.”

“Yeah, _please_ no,” agreed Mur emphatically.

“I mean… I’ve seen it done?” It had looked, he recalled, exceedingly silly, to say nothing of precarious.

“Alan1 give me strength,” muttered Tron.

As it turned out, it felt even siller, more precarious, and, in addition, slow. The lag was partly due to the load, but mostly because ENCOM was a much older system and the energy field wasn’t as strong. The idea that even a small PC from his time like Mainframe was more powerful than a historically major system like ENCOM was startling, but there wasn’t time to think about that now. Gradually and with much wobbling, they rose over the canyon.

From this vantage, they could see the strange, blocky formations where pieces of landscape had been cut and pasted to form the “road,” although its destination was still unclear.

“So…” said Mur slowly as they reached the high ground and dismounted, “someone _powerful_ who isn’t used to attacking programs doesn’t want me installed.”

“But they don’t want to de-rezz you directly,” said Tron.

“How do you figure?”

“If they can do this, they could have cut and pasted a giant rock into the air above your head at any time.”

“Oh. Yeah. Well, that makes me feel _much_ better about things, _thanks_.”

“Come on,” sighed Yori. “It’s about a sector and a half left to the I/O tower. We’d better get walking.”

Fortunately, they didn’t have to walk the entire distance; it was only a few microseconds before they reached a more populated area, although those microseconds were very tense. Every so often a pit would open in the ground ahead of them, and once the cut piece was indeed pasted in the air and crashed to the ground, but not directly over them, and none of the pits appeared quite close enough to stumble into. It seemed Tron was correct about their enemy’s reluctance to act directly, or perhaps they simply didn’t want to harm anyone but Mur. Just in case, they all stayed close together, with Mur riding the zipboard.

It was just as well Mur was riding; she was looking tired from the stress alone. As they neared civilization, she grew even more tense: “What if someone else gets hurt ’cause I’m nearby? I don’t want that on top of everything else!” But the halfhearted cut-and-paste attacks petered out entirely, and they were subjected to nothing more than the perplexed stares of the programs they passed.

“All right, no more delays,” Yori declared, making for a gold-limned archway. “This may not be travelling in style, exactly, but it’s direct…”

 

* * *

 

Enzo sat, feeling awkward, trying to make himself small. Besides his different appearance, he was easily the largest program on the subway. While this was often the case, at home he didn’t attract nearly so many stares.

He wasn’t sure whether the company he kept was helping or not. Tron and Yori belonged here, but they were celebrities, and their assurances that “he’s with us” didn’t really help him blend in.

On the bright side, no one was looking twice at Mur. It probably didn’t make any difference to their situation, but it was one less stressor for her.

“N҉ex̡t stop͜,̛ ̷I͜n̴pu̕t̵-̷O̸ut͏p̵ut T̛o̶wer a̡nd̛ ̸Po͞w̸e͟r Re̕g͝ųl͝ato̶r,” announced the loudspeaker. “D͞oor͢s w̡i̶ll̴ ̕open ͟o̷n̸ the ̕l̡ef͝t.”

The four of them sat up straighter in their seats, ready to depart, when suddenly all the lights went out and the train screeched to a halt. Programs yelped and fell against each other.

“What gives?” Enzo demanded.

Yori checked the window. The train car was still dimly lit by the passengers’ own circuitry, but the usual faint glow from outside had gone along with the interior lighting. “The light rail’s out. The power’s been cut.”

“Three guesses why,” muttered Tron.

“Pl̛eas̴e r͢e̴ma͞i͟n ̧calm.̸ Se͜rvi̛ce wiļl ͟be r͜esto̸re͜d ̵s̛h̡o͏r̡t͢l͜y̡,” crackled the loudspeaker.

From somewhere down the tunnel came a roar and the unmistakeable (to a veteran Gamer) thud of enormous footsteps.

“So much for not endangering others,” said Mur through gritted teeth.

“They didn’t crash the train,” Yori pointed out.

“Oh, well, good for them!”

“They’re probably counting on us coming to the rescue.” Tron gave the others a meaningful glance.

“I hate when they do that,” said Enzo. “Let’s go.”

“Mur, Yori, you stay here,” Tron ordered. “Safety in numbers is probably your best bet right now.”

Mur nodded miserably and hunched her shoulders. Yori winked at Tron, then, while he shoved open the car’s emergency door, she raised her voice. “Everyone, while Tron handles things, I’d like you to meet our friend Mur. Why don’t you all congratulate her on her soon-to-be-successful installation as your newest I/O driver?” As Tron and Enzo left, nervous laughter rose and several passengers tried to coax Mur to smile.

Enzo switched on his gauntlet’s flashlight, and the two made their way forward along the side of the train. They reached the front just as the source of the giant footsteps became visible up ahead.

“Oh, crash it,” muttered Tron.

“I’ve never seen one in person…” whispered Enzo. You didn’t, usually. But the artists’ impressions in his Game classes were close enough for recognition.

It was a grue.

Actually seeing a grue was a rarity. Grues feared light. Typically, if there were enough light to see the grue by, even a candle’s worth, the grue would have fled. (This, it occurred to Enzo, was a particular advantage to programs of Tron’s era, who made their own light.)

It was presumably for this reason that their assailant had fitted this grue with a blindfold.

It was quite a large blindfold.

It was quite a large grue.

It nearly filled the tunnel. It was covered in mangy black fur, but its mouth most nearly resembled that of an anglerfish. The blindfold was lit up faintly red and yellow where its eyes were. It cocked its head, whether smelling, listening, or employing some other sense to locate its prey. Then it uttered a horrible gurgling noise, showing off a great many slavering fangs, and stomped forward.

Tron reached back for his identity disk and loosed it at the grue. Enzo fired a standard bolt from his gauntlet. The grue gave another gurgling roar as both projectiles hit, the disk rebounding and returning to Tron, the bolt lost to view among the grue’s fur, but it did not so much as slow in its charge.

“Well?” Tron demanded, hurling the disk again. “You got any futuristic tricks for dealing with one of these?”

“No!” Enzo snapped back, switching to explosive bolts. “Grues aren’t programmed to _have_ any weaknesses except light! That’s the whole point!” The small explosion made the grue angrier than the standard bolt had, but didn’t otherwise help, and more of them didn’t seem like a terribly good idea in the confines of the tunnel.

“The blindfold, then?”

“The blindfold.”

This was easier said than done. The lighting was poor, which didn’t help their aim. Whatever senses the grue used, they were acute, and it was able to swat Tron’s disk away three times out of four. Enzo’s bolts lodged wherever they hit, but they weren’t well suited to blindfold removal. His sword would have been better, if he could reach the grue’s head without being devoured. His stunner was of little use against an opponent so large.

Then, to top it all off, a faint but distinct humming arose in the direction they had come from.

“Oh, /dev/null no!” barked Tron. “I do _not_ need this now!”

Enzo tried firing a net, which at least impeded the grue’s advance somewhat. “What? What is it?”

“The MCP fragments!”

“Seriously?! How’d they find you _here_?”

“Crashed if I know! They just find me! I’ve caught them tapping against my bathroom window once or twice!”

The hum—more of a chorus now—grew louder as the fragments swarmed up the tunnel, past the waiting train. The warriors continued to focus as best they could on the grue, since the fragments had never yet presented an active threat, but they were a distraction, especially to Tron. They clustered around him, and he had to wave them away to clear a path for his disk.

Enzo spared the little primitives a glance between shots. They certainly looked innocuous. Boxes and tori in an assortment of colours, and lots of thin silver cylinders.

They looked… familiar.

“Holy spam,” he whispered, freezing in realization, and then he all but shouted, “Tron! Don’t worry! This is good, they can help!”

Tron swatted a box away from his face and shot Enzo a confused glare. “What are you talking about?”

Enzo laughed. “Oh my code, it makes perfect sense! Quick, put one on your arm.”

“Are you glitched?” Tron demanded.

“I’m really not! Although I’m probably about to create a paradox after all.”

“Kid, we don’t have _time_ for…”

_“_ _On your right!_ _”_ called Mur’s voice from behind, and then she skated into view, swerving around Tron, barrelling through the swarm of primitives and scattering them.

“Mur!” Enzo protested. “Leave them alone, they’re… and you were supposed to stay back where it’s safe!”

“Because that’s working so well! _Yori!_ How do I activate them?”

“Just click!” Yori called back, leaning around the end of the train and waving what appeared to be a multitool.

Mur went up on her toes in mid-skate and clicked her heels together. Immediately, the cushions of green light on which she skated began to leave extensions of themselves behind her, like miniature light cycles. The trails were only a fraction of a pixel high, but they were enough to trip someone up. “Yesss,” she muttered, and went into a wide zig-zag, the diagonals filling the space between the grue and the train.

“Don’t get too close to it!” Tron hollered.

“I know _that_!” She was doing fine so far; she was _fast_ , and the grue was slower than it might have been without the blindfold. She was well out of the way when it stumbled on the nearest leg of her light-trail, barely catching itself.

Good. She’d bought them some time. Enzo returned his attention to Tron and the regrouping MCP fragments. “Tron, I _get_ it! They’re functions!”

“Say what?”

“They’re pieces of the MCP’s shell script, right? He built it out of all the functions he appropriated! They just want to be executed, but they don’t have a… a guiding intelligence anymore. They just want you to tell them what to do!”

Tron hesitated, trying to process this. “How am I supposed to…”

“Here, just…” Enzo grabbed at the nearest fragment, a dark blue box. He looked around and spotted a black torus and what seemed a suitable cylinder. “You and you. Come here.” They flew closer, obligingly. He snatched them out of the air and stuck them to the box in a familiar configuration, torus on the broad side of the box, rod lying along the end next to it.

The fragments shivered slightly, then nestled more closely against each other. It was more primitive than he remembered, but with time and upgrades…

“Right.” He grabbed Tron’s left hand and slammed the conglomerate against his bracer. It settled quietly but firmly into place, like a stray cat who has decided where home is. “It’s called a keytool. Just give it instructions.”

Tron stared at Enzo. “You _are_ glitched,” he said, but in a tone of resigned amusement. Then he raised his arm to address his new keytool. “All right, you little glitch. You want a command? Get that blindfold off.”

The keytool shifted in place a bit, seeming to consider, or perhaps confer among its parts. Then the torus spun off into the air, widening and flattening as it went, until it was something like a chakram and razor-thin. It flew, making a buzzing noise as it went, to where the grue was picking its way over Mur’s trail, and sliced through the blindfold. The fabric fell, along with a certain amount of fur.

The grue reared back, gurgling in alarm. Enzo pointed his gauntlet’s light at its face, and it screeched, tried to retreat, and stumbled backwards over Mur’s trail.

The torus returned to Tron, shrinking as it went, and resumed its place on the keytool. “Not bad,” Tron said, grudgingly impressed. “Even if the whole thing is still glitched.”

“The best kind of glitch,” Enzo agreed.

Mur skidded to a halt and clicked her light-trail off. Raising her face ceilingward, she pointed at the grue, which was fleeing with all haste now that its path was no longer blocked. “Send it back!” she hollered at the air. “I know you’re watching us! Send it back where it came from!”

The rest of them stared at her. She was panting, and her circuits were blazing unusually bright. “I mean it!” she added.

The sound of scrabbling claws away up the tunnel ceased abruptly.

“That’s better. And you’d better lay off now! Because the Users have called me, and I am _going_ to be installed! And I don’t think you’ve got much left after that anyway.”

Silence. Whether it was, indeed, the silence of their malefactor laying off was unclear.

“Okay, then.” She lowered her gaze and let out a long breath. “I hope that worked.”

“It did if they’re smart,” said Yori, approaching.

“Thanks for the upgrade.”

“Anytime.” Yori turned to Tron. “I see you’ve got a new… something.”

“Keytool, apparently.”

“I thought we were trying to avoid paradoxes?” She raised an eyebrow at Enzo.

“Yeah, but I think this one had to happen. Anyway, bootstrap paradoxes are usually okay in the movies, and cyberspace hasn’t collapsed or anything, so I guess it booted successfully.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Tron dryly. “What about the rest of them?” He waved a hand at the swarm of fragments.

“They can be keytools, too. Maybe some… other security programs could use them?” Enzo tried to say this nonchalantly, but there probably wasn’t much point.

“I do have some trainees who could use something like that. All right. All of you!” he addressed the fragments, and raised the arm with the keytool on it. “Form up like this!”

The fragments milled around for a bit, then grouped off and stuck themselves together in rough approximations of the first keytool’s configuration. The cylinders were on various sides, and some of the tori were off-centre, but it was the same BASIC idea.

“Good enough. Follow me.”

As they headed back around the side of the train, the keytools in formation behind them, the light rail fired back up behind them. “Se̵r͟v҉ic҉e wi̧l̴l r͜e͏sum̛e̛ ̡m̧o͘m̵en̷tar͜ily̴,” declared the loudspeaker.

“I’m a little worried the heel-click might be too sensitive,” Mur told Yori as they boarded. “I don’t want to turn it on or off by accident.”

“I could set it to double-click if you like.”

“Yeah, that’d be good.”

 

* * *

 

“Welcome, young Mur.” An aged program hurried forward as they entered the tower. “Tron, Yori, thank you for bringing her here safely.”

“It was a pretty close thing,” Tron admitted. “Mur, this is Dumont.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Mur. “Am I safe now that I’m here?”

“I believe so,” said Dumont, “although we should proceed with your installation as soon… as…” He trailed off as Enzo entered, followed by the entire swarm of keytools. “You certainly do have a story to tell me, don’t you?”

“One for the archives,” Yori said dryly. “You were right to send us, that’s for certain.”

“So I see. I wish I hadn’t been. Truly I do. Well, some actions cannot be Undone, and we can only move forward.” He gestured Mur, Tron, and Yori into the tower, then looked at Enzo again. “Please introduce me to your friend here.” His tone was pointed, clearly asking: _Is he safe?_

“This is Enzo,” said Yori with a slight nod in answer of the unspoken question. “He’s actually here to see you as well. He’s from the future, believe it or not, and needs help getting home. Enzo, this is Dumont, the guardian of this tower.”

“It’s an honour, sir.” Interesting, he thought, how names and meanings can change over time.

Dumont raised an eyebrow. “Indeed? This certainly sounds worth hearing. If you don’t mind, however, we will discuss it after Mur’s installation.”

“Dude, I mean sir, of course. Priorities.”

“Quite.” Dumont ushered him in and turned back to Tron. “And these?” He gestured at the swarm. “I thought you were having some trouble with them.”

“Turns out they’re on our side. Go figure.” While they proceeded deeper into the tower, he repeated Enzo’s explanation. “Though I’m still not sure why. I mean, why _me_.”

“In my time,” Enzo offered, “keytools form a link with their G—programs. This seems kind of like that. It’d explain how they were able to find you. Not sure how the link was made in the first place, though.”

“Oh, of course!” exclaimed Yori. “Tron, your identity disk! When you de-rezzed the MCP.”

“Other enemies don’t decide to follow me around after I de-rezz them.”

_“_ _Other_ enemies aren’t in the habit of appropriating any code they can get their digits on. It was probably automatic. They must have absorbed just enough to form a connection.”

“Wait, so some of _my_ code is in there?” Tron looked unsure what to think of this.

“Just a few lines,” Enzo assured him. “It’s good, it creates a bond. Just make sure to get it back from the rest of them when you pass them on.”

“Right. I’ll just do that, then.” Tron shrugged. “Well, I won’t complain. This one was a lot of help.”

“It helped us defeat a grue!” Mur declared happily.

“A _grue_?” Dumont looked suitably shocked. “What _exactly_ happened to you? In what ways were you attacked?”

“Well, the grue was the boss fight, obviously. The first time I was attacked by a swarm of bytes, of all things, and then whoever it was tried to stop us by cutting and pasting the landscape.”

“As I feared,” murmured Dumont. “Char variables, cut and paste, a text-based monster. Only one program has that much power over all things textual.”

“Wait…” said Tron. “Tell me you don’t mean who I think you mean.”

“I’m afraid he does,” said a baritone voice as they entered the antechamber to the Communication Room.

The program who awaited them was tall and thin, with long robes, spectacles, and a trim beard, and was younger than Dumont but otherwise far and away the oldest present. His tangerine circuits were a low pulse.

“Vaughn?!” exclaimed Yori.

“Oh, no,” groaned Tron. “Why would you do something like this?”

“You mean _he’s_ been trying to de-rezz me?” Mur demanded. _“_ _Vaughn?_ _”_

Enzo sighed. “Okay, could somebody please fill me in?”

“Vaughn is ENCOM’s chief keyboard driver,” said Yori. “He plays a crucial role in almost all input in the system. He speaks the will of the Users.”

Vaughn’s shoulders twitched and fidgeted, and he was constantly smoothing or adjusting his clothing, small, nervous movements. “I do, yes, that is, I have done so, to the best of my ability.”

“But my installation _is_ the will of the Users!” cried Mur. “I can feel their call right now! You’ve been going _against_ that!”

Vaughn flinched. “I.. that is… yes. You’re right, of course. I admit it. I knew their will, and I opposed it.”

Enzo glowered. “And, what, you’ve finally got up the nerve to do it in person?” He cracked his knuckles. “Good luck with that.”

Vaughn gave him an incredulous look. “Of course not. You defeated a grue. I’m not _glitched_.’

“Sez you,” muttered Mur.

“No, I’m here—that is, I want—well, no, not _want_ , but—” He sighed. “I surrender.”

Enzo blinked. “Wait, what?”

Vaughn bowed his head and extended his hands, wrists together. “Do as you will. My doom is input either way.”

Tron exchanged puzzled glances with the rest of the group, but shrugged and pulled out a pair of energy cuffs. Enzo stood ready in case of a trap.

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?” said Mur. “You brought this on yourself!”

“I think he’s saying you pose some kind of threat to him,” said Yori. “ _That’s_ why he’s been after you.”

“Indeed, you—that is, not you in _yourself_ , but your installation—will spell my obsolescence.” He tried to adjust his clothing again, found it difficult with bound wrists, and grimaced. “I sought only my own safety, to my shame.”

“Sorry, _what_?” Mur still looked partly angry, but mostly baffled. “You think I’m going to, what, replace you?”

“‘Supplant’ might be a better term. Yes.” He still seemed to be trying to maintain his dignity, but mostly he just looked miserable.

Dumont cut in, perhaps taking pity on his erstwhile colleague. “The Users are installing a brand new input device. Mur is to be the new driver.”

Mur looked stunned and was actually distracted from Vaughn. “A whole new kind of input? Me?”

“You, my dear.”

Vaughn sighed heavily. “With the new device, I and my function will no longer be needed, and I will fade away. But if the installation failed…”

Mur threw her hands in the air. “But the Users commanded my installation! You’re supposed to _serve_ the Users!”

“I am, I do, but I—”

“And if you _did_ de-rezz me, what’s to stop them from just summoning someone else?”

“I know, I just—I only—”

“You panicked,” Mur said severely.

Vaughn cringed. “I panicked. I thought if…” He looked up sharply. “Why is he laughing?”

Enzo was trying not to, but snorts and raspberry noises kept escaping. “I’m sorry, it’s just… what exactly is the new peripheral?”

“I believe it’s called a mouse,” said Dumont.

“Oh my _code_.” Enzo hooted with laughter. “I knew it. Holy spam. You thought _mice_ were going to _replace_ keyboards? _That’s_ what all this is about?”

“I… that is… yes?” Vaughn looked uncertain in the face of this. Everyone else was staring.

“Dude! They’re totally different kinds of input. One doesn’t make the other any less necessary. I’m from the future, okay, and I’ve never even _heard_ of a system in my time that doesn’t have mouse _and_ keyboard input. Their drivers work _together_ half the time. The worst that would’ve happened is the transfer of a few duties. A little less work for you, that’s all.”

“Just… a little less work…” Now Vaughn looked dazed.

“Some downtime here and there. _Maybe_ enough for a vacation, even, though I can’t promise that. Keyboard drivers are busy sprites.”

Vaughn groaned loudly. “Oh, Users, what have I done?”

_“_ _Now_ he asks what he’s done,” grumbled Mur.

“And now my fate is written through my own actions,” he continued miserably.

“Probably, since you tried to _de-rezz me_.”

“Perhaps,” Dumont suggested, “we should complete the young one’s installation before discussing this further.”

“Fine by me,” sighed Mur. “The call’s getting pretty urgent. Like having to go to the bathroom, only I need to input instead of output.”

“Eloquently put,” agreed Dumont dryly. “Please… hold it… a moment longer while I dock myself.”

Ensconcing himself in his control console was a bit of a process. While they waited, Mur ran through her part of the installation ceremony with Yori’s help, and was grudgingly persuaded that attempting to traverse the steps to the Communication Room while wearing skates would be a bad idea; Tron and Enzo stood guard over Vaughn, although he didn’t seem up to making any more trouble anyway and in fact chose to slump in a corner.

Finally Dumont was ready, engulfed in his console. The only visible parts of him were his hands upon the controls and his head with its ceremonial hat. At the Guardian Academy, a popular student prank was to climb the statue of Tron and his companions (zipboards were considered cheating) and put ridiculous objects on the Dumont figure’s head; this hat was still the silliest thing Enzo had ever seen there.

“Mur,” he said sternly, “come forward.”

Mur swallowed, squared her shoulders, and stepped up onto the bottom step.

“Why have you come, child?” The tone was ritual; the question had to be asked, even though everybody knew the answer.

Mur took a loud breath and replied: “A User calls me, although I know them not.”

“All that is visible must grow beyond itself and extend into the realm of the invisible.”

“We must reach for the unknown before we can ourselves be known.”

“Enter, my child, and know your User; enter and know yourself.” A hand moved on a control, and a door opened behind him.

Mur ascended the remaining steps, exchanged a shaky smile for an encouraging one from Dumont, and vanished through the doorway.

After a moment of silence, Enzo said, “I thought it’d be longer.”

“Well,” said Tron, “that’s just the startup sequence. The real thing happens inside.”

“Yeah. Still. She gets a party or something afterwards, right?”

“Of course, but the installation itself is a very… intimate moment between you and your User. Why, how do you do it?”

Enzo considered trying to explain how identity disks would become ubiquitous and develop into icons, or how the Users themselves would grow more distant. “Sorry. Too many spoilers.”

“You already created a bootstrap paradox.”

“Yeah, but my life is weird enough without being personally responsible for the _entire_ future.”

“Fair enough.”

Yori had begun to tell Dumont of their journey in greater detail. Enzo and Tron joined in, although Tron remained standing over Vaughn and raised his voice to compensate. Enzo just made sure to keep him in his line of sight. Vaughn slumped down further in his corner with the description of each episode, until he was sitting with his forehead resting on his knees.

“I gotta say, Mur handled things really well,” said Enzo. “I mean, it obviously wasn’t a situation she had any experience with, and it was getting to her big time, but she didn’t give up and she really rallied at the end there.”

“Yes. She will do well.” Vaughn’s voice was muffled by his knees.

They all turned to stare at him. At the silence, he lifted his head. “She handled the actual threat of… well, me… far better than I handled a presumed threat, and at her age. I suppose I have no business even offering my opinion now, but…” He shrugged. “There it is.”

“Thanks, I guess,” said Mur, emerging from the passage.

Enzo thought she _might_ have been taller, although it might just have been that she stood straighter. The major difference was her circuitry. It was brighter, and much finer and more complex, especially at her hands, feet, and temples, where it was an intricate, almost feather-like tracery. Her expression was the slightly unfocused one of someone who has an awful lot to process.

“Welcome back,” said Dumont. “I trust all went well?”

“I think so.” She flexed her fingers tentatively. “It’s _very_ weird. I can still feel her, even out here.”

“Your User?” asked Enzo.

“My installer, anyway. It’s just her so far, but… I’m going to have way more than just one User. I hope I can make room for them all in my head.”

Vaughn nodded. “It will be difficult—perhaps I should say confusing—at first, but you will get used to it. You are… resilient.”

When her gaze did focus, it focused intensely, her entire attention concentrated on a single point. She was still standing at the top of the steps, and her stare seemed to pin Vaughn to the floor. “You’re awfully friendly all of a sudden.”

Vaughn flinched and averted his eyes. “I am resigned. As I suppose I should have been from the start. Of course, if I had, there would have been nothing to resign myself to. I am trying to appreciate the irony.”

“Mmm.” She seemed lost in thought for a moment, although she remained focused on Vaughn. Then she said, “Well, you’re right about two things. I _will_ get the hang of things, but it’ll take time.” The target of her gaze swept over to Dumont. “What’s going to happen to him?”

Dumont bore up under her stare, but it was clearly an effort. “I… suppose we shall need a new keyboard driver as well.” The lack of direct answer was an answer in itself.

“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? Can we really afford that? I’m going to have enough of a time adjusting.”

“What are you suggesting?” demanded Tron.

Mur turned back to Vaughn. She flexed her fingers again, then pointed at him. Frowning slightly, she raised her hand, and Vaughn lifted into the air with an utterly undignified squawk.

“I’m suggesting we keep him around, at least for now. I hate to say this, but I need someone experienced. ENCOM needs someone experienced.” Carefully, she lowered Vaughn until his flailing feet made contact with the floor. “And he’s not the only one with power now.”

“We can see that,” said Yori, as they all stared. “Mur… are you sure about this? If anyone has the right to decide, it’s you, but we don’t want you regretting it later.”

Mur sighed a little. She released Vaughn, who staggered, and closed her eyes. “Honestly, I think I’ll regret it more if I don’t. Two newbies at once will be one too many, and… and I _really_ don’t want to start my career with an execution. I really don’t.”

Vaughn gaped at her. “You would truly forgive—that is, pardon—I mean…”

“I would put you on _probation_ ,” Mur snapped, lancing him with her gaze again. “As long as we’re clear about two things. One, I am not, nor do I want to be, any kind of threat to you.”

“I… yes, understood. And the second?”

Mur descended the steps without breaking eye contact. She didn’t even come up to his shoulder, but neither of them seemed to notice. “Just because I don’t _want_ to be a threat doesn’t mean I _can’t_ be. Got it?”

Vaughn swallowed. “Got it.”

“Good. Yori, can I have my skates back, please?”

 

* * *

 

When Enzo finally broached the subject of the Return command, it turned out that the one who could help him was not Dumont, but Vaughn. This seemed potentially awkward, but Vaughn was in full-on redemption-seeking mode and his relief at being able to do something to help was so intense it was all Enzo could do not to laugh. He nearly tripped on his robes in his hurry to go prepare one.

“Good thing you spared him, I guess,” said Enzo. “For me, anyway. You really think it’s going to work out with him?”

“I think so,” said Mur. “I mean, look at him. He’s guilty over what he did, and relieved to keep on processing. Pretty sure he’s gonna be _super_ helpful for a while. And if he’s not, I’ve got my powers now.” She grinned. “ _And_ the moral high ground.”

Enzo laughed. “Gonna be hanging onto that?”

“Are you kidding? I am going to be the best, most gracious crashing colleague he can _imagine_. I may even bring cookies to work.”

“Oh, man. Harsh.”

Mur steepled her fingers. “My vengeance shall be swift and delicious.”

 

* * *

 

They looked at the little golden command, small enough to fit in Enzo’s hand with the fingers closed, which would send him home.

“I guess that’s it, then,” said Yori.

“Yeah. I mean, yes and no.” Enzo filed the command carefully in his belt. “That’s that settled, but I’m not done here yet.”

“Why, what’s left?” asked Tron.

Enzo produced his camera and brandished it. “Sightseeing, duh! And then there’s that signature file…”

 

* * *

 

It was a pleasure working with you. Weird, but a pleasure. _Tron_

Thank you for all your help, and for Tron’s new friend. _Yori_

Thanks for everything! Full speed ahead! _Mur_

An unexpected honor. _Dumont_

Thank you. _Vaughn_

0110100001100101011011000110110001101111001000000111011101101111011100100110110001100100 _010001110110110001101001011101000110001101101000_

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this as a solo adventure in a roleplaying game, but I've modified it to work as a standalone fic. A friend came up with the idea of Tron founding the Guardians before _Tron: Legacy_ came out, and I continue to stick with only the original Tron in connection with ReBoot. _Legacy_ takes place significantly later than ReBoot, and the Grid was an experimental offline system left to its own devices for decades, so there's no reason the two should resemble each other anyway. Maybe it's an alternate future, maybe the Tron in the Grid was a copy and the original followed a different path, interpret it as you like.
> 
> I figure that those Guardians who don't have keytools are inclined to collect weapons and other toys. They'd kind of have to, wouldn't they? Enzo as I play him favours a _liuyedao_ and a multi-function grapnel-gauntlet (as well as judo), plus a small stunner.
> 
> A few things, like the term "glitched" and Yori's exact format, came from the Tron novelization rather than the actual movie. Some other details, mainly the programs' appearance, come from the notion that the movie as we know it is a Hollywood approximation and it would look a bit different to the programs themselves. A byte appears in the Tron 2.0 game, but that one speaks in complete sentences; I have reinterpreted them to correspond more logically with bits.
> 
> One thing explicitly stated in the novelization is that the outfits worn by Tron and Yori in the movie are slave uniforms. Whatever they're wearing in this story, therefore, it's not that! I'm not sure _what_ , though. Any suggestions?


End file.
